With their infinite possibilities, certain synthesizers can attract a type of obsession—perhaps none more so than the rare Buchla 100 Series Modular Electronic Music System. Created by Don Buchla in the early 1960s, the instrument’s colorful, cord-laced interface reflects how it tends to rewire the brains of its custodians. When Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith discovered one fresh out of college, she promptly ditched her folk band and dedicated herself to mastering the machine. Now 29, the Los Angeles-based singer and producer has perfected some programming “recipes,” but she says part of the Buchla’s magic is how it captures something unexplored—an approach reflected in Smith’s own music, as she forges tactile new worlds with every record. “It's taught me a lot of patience,” she says of the instrument.

Smith’s latest album, EARS, is her first to pair the Buchla’s beautiful undulations with traditional instrumentation. The record’s opener, “First Flight,” initially evokes spacier climes while harking back to proto-synth forebears such as Laurie Spiegel before settling in a fertile, bubbling soundscape that sets the tone for what’s to come. At the record’s heart is a bright and lively primordial pulse, which Smith shapes with mellow woodwind motifs and soothing vocal chants (though what might sound like a flute is actually a tone distilled from her voice, using granular synthesis). It’s meditative, but more indebted to the avant-jazz of Alice Coltrane than, say, Enya. In combining organic and electronic sounds, Smith’s aim was to make listeners “feel like they were in a lush, outdoor environment.”

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith playing the portable Buchla Music Easel, which she uses during live shows.

Calling from her home at 7 a.m., before her daily yoga class, Smith says nature is her “main source of curiosity outside of music.” She definitely comes across as quite a hippie—albeit a very grounded one with designs on composing for film and mastering 3D sound. Prior to making music her full-time gig, she worked in landscaping and homesteading. When I suggest that her music is somewhat psychedelic, she instead suggests the term “existential,” explaining that she sees its potential for broad themes and intricate minutiae as being “kind of like the Golden Ratio.” Unsurprisingly, she’s found kindred spirits in Animal Collective; last fall, Panda Bear asked her to open for him, and she’ll tour with the full band this spring.

This affinity for the natural world stems back to Smith’s childhood on Orcas, the largest of the San Juan Islands (population: around 5,000), located just off the northwestern coast of Washington State; her song “Wetlands” mimics the birdcall of the island’s native Swainson’s Thrush. Smith was home-schooled on Orcas, and her mom ran a chapel, where Smith used the piano to write original material from a young age—she regularly annoyed music teachers by focusing on her own compositions instead of assigned recitations. At 13, Smith went through a phase of writing rock anthems. “At that time I was also really into Loreena McKennitt and opera,” she recalls, “so it was this horrible mixture of opera singing over terrible rock samples.” While these early experiments may not have been completely successful, they served a purpose, kick-starting her relationship with synthesizers.

Orcas maintains a culture of mentorships between its older and younger residents, and at 16, Smith was paired with a local film composer, who lent her some Kurzweil samplers and gave her a copy of ProTools. It was her first proper schooling in synthetic instruments and soundscapes. “My mind was blown by just how many textures you could get and how much control you could have,” she says. (Ever since, Smith has always sought out mentors for her work.) She discovered Philip Glass and Brian Eno, and went on to study composition and sound engineering with classical guitar and piano at Berklee, where she started a folk duo, Ever Isles.

But that project was swiftly curtailed after Smith returned to Orcas following graduation, and a neighbor introduced her to the Buchla. “He lent me his system for a year, and I haven’t really touched a guitar since,” she explains. The instrument’s unpredictable quality matched her longstanding subconscious approach to music making, which she discovered in college, learning long pieces by falling asleep to them. Years later, she’s still learning about the Buchla’s endless permutations. Smith is now part of the close-knit Buchla community—she’s currently working on a full-length collaboration with synth pioneer Suzanne Ciani—which evangelizes the synth’s consciousness-expanding properties with cultish enthusiasm. “When I hear any sound in the entire world, I end up thinking, How would I have made that?” she says. “It’s a really fun thought process to go through all the time.”

Pitchfork: The Buchla inspires a particular fervor in its users.

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith: It’s really respected for its interface design—which is what Don Buchla focused on the most. At that time, it was mostly [Bob] Moog and Buchla, and Moog was more [geared] towards trying to create a synth that you could easily translate from the piano. Don was the opposite. He was trying to create something that would help you access the part of your brain that separates what you’re used to with a keyboard. Morton Subotnik, who commissioned him to make the Buchla, wanted an instrument that brought a novelty to composition.

Pitchfork: Do you still have that first Buchla that your Orcas neighbor lent you?

KAS: I don’t, but whenever I move somewhere I always put feelers out for who’s gonna be my Buchla fairy. I’ve just found my Buchla fairy for L.A. so I have another Buchla 100 entering into my life, as well as lots of other synths that I’m exploring.

Pitchfork: Is your L.A. Buchla fairy also your current mentor?

KAS: Yeah. He is a film-audio supervisor who does 5.1 sound systems, which is something I’m really interested in right now. I want to explore the 3D sound environment. He’s my mentor in that area, but he happens to have a really large synth collection that he’s not using right now, so I’m helping him organize that stuff and I set up the Buchla system in exchange for me getting to use it.

Pitchfork: Is there a narrative to EARS? The track titles—“First Flight,” “Rare Things Grow”—imply life springing from a kind of primordial state.

KAS: It was intended to feel like this life-death cycle. I have my own personal narrative to go with it but I didn't want to share that with people because I wanted it to be their own visual journey. My hope was to create a synthesia journey. My visual brain and my auditory brain are very much connected. They feed and trade off one another when it comes to my composition process.

Pitchfork: Visually, you are also inspired by the French artist Moebius and Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki. What strikes you about their work?

KAS: I was trying to figure out the visual of this natural world I wanted to create. I kept getting this color palette that was similar to the sea creature nudibranch—they’re this incredible palette of neon colors. And both Moebius and Miyazaki have that natural world where it feels like there’s chaos and balance at the same time. The [Miyazaki] movie Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is set in this time in the future where there are all of these toxins, so certain plants can’t grow outside. It also has this one character who goes out into the world and collects all these seeds and creates an underground garden. That was an inspiration.

Pitchfork: You’ve said that your favorite musician is D’Angelo.

KAS: I have a lot of favorite musicians. Al Green is another one that’s in that similar realm. I just have a soft spot for really amazing grooves and the male falsetto. And I love barbershop harmonies where they’re really close together—whenever I hear someone using those, my ear gets really excited. I’m always wondering what new intervals I haven’t explored.